The leaders of the NGO named after Lavochkin are checked on the validity of payments to lawyers

Investigators unravel the scheme of embezzlement in an NGO, in which money was withdrawn under the guise of agreements with the Tretyakov and Partners law firm. The Bureau was supposed to represent the interests of NGOs in squabbles with the parent organization, Roskosmos.

The general director of the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association (NGO), Sergey Lemeshevsky, and the head of the legal department of the company Ekaterina Averyanova can become the defendants of the criminal case on abuse of authority. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SCR) began the audit on the basis of the materials of the Prosecutor's Office of the Moscow Region and the FSB, which revealed facts of unreasonable, in their opinion, multi-million premium payments to the Tretyakov and Partners law firm. Lawyers had to represent the interests of NGOs in court proceedings with the main shareholder of the association - Roskosmos. Lawyers, according to security officers and prosecutors, received 332.5 million rubles for two years, while contracts with them were in violation of the law, and the real work in the courts was performed by employees of the NGO itself or other lawyers.

The GKU of the Moscow Region for the beginning of the pre-investigation investigation of possible abuses at the Lavochkin NGO - this fact was confirmed by Kommersant both in the investigation department and in Roskosmos. Details are not reported either in the TFR or in the state corporations. However, according to Kommersant sources, the basis for the procedural actions was the verification materials of NGOs conducted jointly by the Moscow Region Prosecutor's Office and the operatives of the P department of the FSB's economic security service.

According to several sources in the space industry, operative information on the system of payments of the so-called success fees to the employees of the Tretyakov and Partners law firm was subjected to verification. According to the audit, the law firm, whose office is located near the metro station "Sukharevskaya" in Moscow, in 2016 almost became a monopolist in representing the interests of NGOs in its litigation with its main shareholder - Roskosmos State Corporation (95.7% owned by the state corporation name of Lavochkin).

Involvement of the office "Tretyakov and Partners" for the provision of legal services inspectors associated with the appointment on January 9, 2016 to the post of adviser to the general director of the NGO Ekaterina Averyanova, who later took up the post of head of the directorate of legal support for the association. The new top manager considered that the NGO lawyers can not cope with litigation with Roskosmos, and convinced Mr. Lemeshevsky of the need to involve a third-party law firm. As Kommersant sources explain, Ms. Averyanova explained her choice in favor of "Tretyakov and partners" with the results of Internet monitoring and statistics of cancellation of court decisions.
However, the verifiers of the written results of the monitoring conducted by the head of the monitoring department were not found, and Ms. Averyanova herself could not imagine them.

In the course of negotiations with the head of the law firm Igor Tretyakov, according to the auditors, the head of the legal directorate established the amount of bonus ("fee of success") that lawyers were supposed to rely on in case of victory in court or a significant reduction in the amount of money claims from Roskosmos. The size of the premium was 8% of the amount of "winnings".

For two years, according to the auditors, 23 contracts for the provision of legal services have been concluded between the NGO and the law firm. Moreover, as Kommersant sources in the rocket and space industry tell, the audit revealed that they were all concluded in violation of the federal law "On the Procurement of Goods, Works, Services by Individual Types of Legal Entities" and the procurement provisions of the Roskosmos Group. In particular, the provision provides that, without competitive procedures, purchases of up to 500 thousand rubles are possible. To circumvent this restriction, the auditors established, the services in the contracts were fragmented, and this already contradicts the requirements of the federal law.

In addition, according to the audit, preliminary agreements were not made with the company's profile subdivisions, which violates the internal requirements of the NGO.
Prosecutors and security officers also came to the conclusion that "success fees" were paid to lawyers from budget funds allocated for state contracts, and included in the cost of production of NGOs as overheads, which ultimately reduced the net profit of the association.

At the same time, the contracts themselves were not subject to VAT, they did not stipulate the procedure for termination and responsibility of the parties, there was no justification for the cost of services, and so on.

The inspectors also revealed cases when, in their opinion, the bonuses were paid without any justification. So, in October 2016, according to one of the arbitration cases, the Tretyakov and Partners office received an award of 18.2 million rubles from the NGOs, although the court decision for which it was paid, then the cassation instance canceled, sending the case for a new trial . Also, prosecutors and security officers found that work on contracts with the law firm was performed either by the employees of the legal department of the association or by a legal non-commercial partnership whose employees did not have an advocacy status. At the same time, the sources in the rocket and space industry note, the prosecutor's office had previously pointed out the inadmissibility of such practices, but even after its intervention the NGO paid 154.6 million rubles to the law firm, the total amount of payments for two years was 332.5 million rubles.

The head of the Roskosmos press service, Vladimir Ustimenko, stressed in a conversation with Kommersant that the head of the state corporation Dmitry Rogozin had already held a meeting at which he heard a report by his deputy on security, Sergey Demin, on the situation in the NGO named after Lavochkin. "We have been and will continue to provide all necessary assistance to the investigative authorities," said Mr. Ustimenko. The law firm "Tretyakov and Partners" declined to comment.